The present invention relates generally to the field of methods for coloring a substrate by a process to create a water color or tie-dye effect on the substrate and combining these initial steps with a combination of further steps for subsequent use in a greeting card or other useful product.
A colorant, or the substance used to give color to an ink, is either dye, pigmentation, or other color-causing ingredient. The colorant, consisting of molecules or small particles, blends with a carrier-based solution or suspension. A carrier-dye based ink tints or stains the substrate on a molecular level and gives color to the substrate by virtue of differential absorption or reflection of some region or regions of the visible electromagnetic radiation spectrum of light.
The initial process and steps in the present invention resemble and include the process of chromatography, which is an analytical process for separating mixtures containing substances (which may or may not be colored) on the surface of a separation phase medium or through such a medium. In the chromatographic process, the substances in a mixture move substantial distances through the medium by intentional displacement of a mobile phase (solvent) in a defined direction through the medium (stationary phase) which separates one molecular substance from other molecules in the mixture. The aforementioned ‘substantial distances’ for the separation process in chromatography are often easily visible to the naked eye and often many centimeters if the chromatography takes place within the matrix (and is visible on the surface) of a common substance like chromatography paper or a thin layer chromatogram.
Chromatography exploits the differences in partitioning behavior between a mobile phase (solvent) and a stationary phase to separate the components in a mixture. Components of a mixture may be chemically or physically interacting with the mobile and stationary phases and separation is based on properties such as charge, molecular size, molecular polarity, hydrogen bonding, relative solubility or adsorption.
Watercolor art often requires repeated very careful sequential applications of wet colorant to substrate interspersed with time periods of drying. The watercolor colorant is usually carefully applied to a position using a brush. Effort is taken to apply the colorant to regions on the substrate defined by the user and to prevent the color from running. Children and people with handicaps have a difficult time using a brush in this fashion and keeping the colors from bleeding and being applied to unwanted regions.
It should be appreciated that this invention, methods, and processes would work equally well with ‘dyes’ and ‘inks’ that are not initially visible to the eye, e.g. ‘invisible inks’, that are revealed only after a secondary treatment such as short wave ultraviolet irradiation, heating, or chemical treatment, or a combination thereof, in which a chemical or photochemical process takes place to produce the colored regions of the substantially wicking substrate.